- Smart Manufacturing HOME
-
Choice of approach
- Solution
- Products/Services
- Event/Seminar
-
Column/Case Study
- Inquiry
As is well known, the current social environment is undergoing a period of major change due to advances in technology and other factors. As business needs change from moment to moment, companies are required to quickly and effectively develop and improve products and services, and shorten the lead time for delivery.
In order to achieve this, "low-code development" is attracting worldwide attention because it connects users on the business side with developers on the IT side and also supports agile processes.
Macnica recently invited people from Siemens, which provides the world's leading low-code development platform Mendix, for a roundtable discussion.
In this article, Danny Roest (hereinafter referred to as Danny) and Mr. Tarig Elomari (hereinafter referred to as Tarig), who joined Siemens in the same year and are known as the `` Mendix twins'', discuss Mendix 's strengths and case studies. We will deliver the content of the lecture.
*This article contains Japanese content translated from English by an interpreter.
Speaker profile
Danny Roest
Danny majored in computer science and has worked as a consultant and software architect.
At Mendix, he started as a technical consultant in Expert Services and was promoted to front-end product manager a year later. We launched native mobile, PWA, AR, and some UI building improvements.
For two years, I've been leading a team of product managers in app development, including Studio Pro and runtimes.
Tarig Elomari
After successfully running multiple Mendix projects in the UK, Tarig moved to Singapore in 2020 to support Mendix 's growth in APAC. He also has an interesting track record of using Mendix to create a board game that helps teach financial accounting.
Background of Mendix and overview of the software market
Danny:
First, let me tell you how the platform called Mendix was created. Derek Roos, the creator of Mendix, was a genius. He started a software company and eventually delivered the first version of the software to a customer.
He thought the program was in good shape after all the testing, but when the customer received the product, he said, ``It's not working the way I want it to.'' From there, he began using Visio to rebuild the app together with the customer, asking himself, "Is this what the customer intended?" This led him to decide to create Mendix, a platform that allows everyone to understand and proceed with development through the use of visuals.
In recent years, the demand for software innovation has increased tremendously. However, in reality, the speed of IT development has not kept pace with this demand, resulting in significant delays in software development projects at many sites.
Under these circumstances, we at Mendix help the business and IT sides use a common visual language to help them complete software more quickly. As a result, we have a huge number of partners using Mendix. We have been recognized as a leader in research by a major US research firm for several years.
Mendix's strengths in the field of low-code and no-code development
The future of application development
Danny:
We believe the future of applications will be composable, and a leading US research firm agrees.
This shows the evolution of the architecture. The one on the left is the so-called monolithic, so-called service-driven type. The center is similar, except that it has a lot of very complex elements throughout. And on the right is a diagram showing a composable future. In this case, a combination of various elements such as CRM, ERP, and analytics can be considered.
The diagram above represents the so-called full stack, which is also the traditional form where the application is directly connected to various systems. Large solutions have many Microservices. In the future, it will be important to utilize these building blocks and various reusable elements to create unique and needed services and experiences.
Taking things a step further, there are event-driven architectures that respond to events as they occur. Another trend that is being advocated by a major US research firm is one related to AI. When utilizing AI, it will be necessary to utilize multiple types and create smart applications.
Comparison with ecosystem vendors
Danny:
We call vendors who provide no-code systems ecosystem vendors. For example, a major IT company may create a system that can be completed within the company. If you want to integrate with other parts of a platform or create a simple application, you can do it with just an ecosystem vendor. However, if you need to collaborate with external parties or build more complex applications, this is no longer the case.
Mendix, on the other hand, allows you to develop with a rich consumer-grade UX, supports multiple channels and devices, and supports the entire software lifecycle.
It also has a cloud-native architecture, including public cloud and private cloud. This makes it a highly open and extensible platform that allows different teams to collaborate. We have strong backing through collaboration with excellent vendors, and have been highly evaluated by major US research companies for a long time.
Comparison with competition
Danny:
We'll also explain the differences between Mendix and competing platforms.
First, Mendix has built-in version control that its competitors don't have. This is a huge advantage since change tracking is essential when developers collaborate with others. Additionally, it supports Git, which is widely used.
Mendix is also cloud-native and has the mass production of Microservices in mind. Therefore, upgrades and releases can be handled individually. On the other hand, if you have a competing platform that leverages an architecture where the entire application is intertwined, you will need to update everything to reflect everything.
One of Mendix 's strengths is that it releases new features every month, and at the same time emphasizes safety and provides stable versions that can be supported for a long time. If the release is infrequent, such as once a year, there will be significant changes each time. Users are then required to manually build their applications, which is difficult to do.
Mobile compatibility is also a very important factor in development. Mendix allows mobile development with React Native, which is very widely used.
We are also proud to have Siemens, a company with a long-standing mission of making the world a better place, as a partner.
Relationship between Mendix and SAP
Utilization in the add-on area associated with SAP conversion
Tarig:
I would like to talk about Mendix and SAP transformation.
Since 2016, we have been awarded the title of "SAP Strategic Technology Partner". And at Mendix and SAP, engineers are working together to create a roadmap for O-data and Bappy Connector.
By using principal transmission, you can deploy SAP systems and Mendix applications with full security, and you can also build applications in Hana database in real time. We also provide Fiori templates because engineers want to provide developers with an experience that includes visual appearance.
The reason why SAP is a Mendix partner is because we want the core parts to remain clean. If you look back over the past 20-30 years, the SAP user experience has been over-customization of so-called legacy systems such as ECC and R2 instances. This increases the risk for the entire organization and makes upgrades difficult.
Our marketplace provides accelerators for using SAP. We have over 300,000 Mendix developers, so we provide rich content at low prices on our marketplace, and by downloading it, we encourage you to actively develop. I'm doing it. For example, we have a template like ``Mobile Mutual Management.''
This slide describes the value we provide to our customers. For example, on the far left is content such as "Improve developer productivity." Mendix in general, of course, targets both the business side and the IT side, but in this context, we are primarily talking about a 10x increase in productivity on the IT side.
CIOs in regions including Japan often say that it is extremely difficult to find people who can act as SAP consultants. Even if you can find one, I often hear that the cost of building such extensions using ABAP or Fiori is extremely high in terms of human resources.
Mendix offers a variety of features that make your business faster and is used in a wide range of industries. Use cases for extending the SAP core are often implemented in Mendix.
SAP case study
Tarig:
From here, I will tell you about a case study from one of our customers.
The first is Mr. Cosun, who runs a farm in the Netherlands. We've been using an R2 instance since 1989, with over 600 customizations made on the ECD stance. However, through development efforts and appropriate consulting, we were able to narrow the number down to less than half, to 250.
In addition, he has successfully built 15 Mendix applications in two and a half years. As a result, this customer's development speed was seven times faster than before, significantly increasing sales, reducing costs, and streamlining operations. The application that had a particularly large impact was mainly used to obtain approval for procurement. We also performed various types of mobile maintenance.
The second is SIBELCO, a mining company. This is an important use case for us, as the speed and quality of application construction achieved in the five years since the introduction of Mendix has been extremely high.
This slide shows in detail our efforts over the past five years. We started small and built our practice, replacing complex traditional use cases and code. From there, SIBELCO was able to scale extremely quickly.
As Danny mentioned earlier, when building something highly complex that needs to be connected to CRM or ERP, for example, it becomes difficult for so-called ecosystem vendors to respond. It can be said that the advantage of Mendix was that we were able to clear this point quickly and accurately.
This customer has deployed this system for 30 subjects, and we can say that this is the value. The biggest one is that we can now keep the core clean. It also brings speed and agility to IT, increasing the speed of collaboration between the business and IT sides.
Application development structure and process
Tarig:
Our philosophy is to bridge the gap between the business side and the IT side in order to lead the project to success. As shown in the previous example, building complex enterprise applications still requires a team. Elements such as governance, local capabilities, best practices, and composability are also essential to the team's pillars. If we can firmly establish these aspects, the project will scale at an accelerated pace.
Another key point is the "3 S 's": Start, Staructure, and Scale. If you start development using Mendix, your ultimate goal is to scale to the point where you can create 25 or more applications in a year using Mendix.
Throughout our journey timeline, we always keep in mind the 4 P 's: People, Portfolio, Process, and Platform. Verify consistently throughout the project and make adjustments as necessary. We then carefully create KPIs jointly with the customer and monitor progress.
I will also explain the 4 P 's. The first term, People, means that in addition to the customer's human resources and resources, we will further augment them with the personnel of our partners. The second Portfolio refers to use cases using Mendix.
Regarding the third process, we advocate agile cut-scale, although it depends on the stage of the customer journey. The fourth platform refers to Mendix. Specifically, it is a platform that integrates the core system and Mendix. This is integration in the sense of technology.
This is a method we propose called App Factory. In most cases, we start with one to three use cases. As shown in the diagram, it is important to identify who is responsible for each role within an organization.
The area of responsibility varies depending on the person's affiliation; on the IT side, the person is the product owner or user; on the business side, the person is often responsible for managing requirements, explaining requirements to developers, and verifying what the developers have created. .
However, people on the business side are often involved in other tasks in parallel. For this reason, we have designed the overall process to create as much impact as possible while minimizing communication on the IT side as much as possible.
Once the necessary personnel have been determined, it's time to support the team from above and below, as shown in the diagram above. For example, the bottom right part of the diagram shows that experts from different areas are involved as needed to support the team.
Especially in the early stages of a project, we will make great use of our 20 years of knowledge and know-how. Over time, the people on your initial team gain experience, mature, and create value. From there, the project progressed at an accelerated pace, expanding to a second and third team.
If you can create this kind of flow, the value of using Mendix will become even stronger. In the early stages, the mindset is project-based, so there are various limitations, and the scale is small. However, as the project truly scales, it is not impossible to develop over 150 applications per year.
The company that achieved this number was ASML, a company that produces semiconductor equipment in the Netherlands. The company was given a mission to ``double the company's overall sales in three years.'' To accomplish this mission, the amount of investment in Mendix can be said to be very small. Additionally, ASML has a very large number of end users, at 14,000.
This is a diagram showing which departments within ASML 's company have implemented Mendix. The first implementation at the company was in the engineering department. As the efforts in this department became successful and matured, the business side began to recognize the value of Mendix, saying, ``Let's build our own applications with Mendix.'' Eventually, this trend spread to HR, legal, and manufacturing. It can be said that ASML is a customer who has realized the true value of Mendix.
Summary
This time, we asked Danny and Tarig from Siemens to talk about Mendix 's strengths and usage examples.
This discussion reaffirmed that Mendix is a globally popular platform that is contributing to significant improvements in business efficiency in various industries. In addition, the fact that its use is not limited to IT side, including developers, but also extends to business-side teams such as sales, clearly shows the convenience of Mendix.
In order to adapt to accelerating changes in the social environment, speedy business reforms are essential. Mendix will be a reliable ally in helping you achieve that goal.
To create an organization that can respond to changes in the business environment!
Macnica supports customers in strengthening their DX development systems and training their human resources.